Tag Archives: Palestinian Authority

While the White House confirms that since the “Jerusalem Declaration” there has been a complete disconnect between the Palestinian Authority and the Trump administration, it turns out that the previous administration actually maintains contact with PA officials. Ma’ariv reported that former US Secretary of State John Kerry met in London with a close associate of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Hussein Agha, for a long and open conversation about a variety of topics. Agha apparently reported details of the conversation to senior PA officials in Ramallah. A senior PA official confirmed to Ma’ariv that the meeting took place.

This is not coy politics, folks. This is TREASON.

Obama, ever the devious and dishonest Democrat and his just-as-dishonest Deep State team, is NEVER willing to (and never was while he was in the White House) do what’s best for the USA.

Obama and team do not even have enough decency to be properly ashamed of themselves.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday told the United Nations that Israel is not a peace partner, and said its “colonial occupation” of the West Bank and East Jerusalem was breeding incitement and violence in the region.

In an address to the General Assembly, Abbas said the international community was responsible for putting an end to Israeli policies that “incite religious tensions and could lead to a violent religious conflict.”

“We are entrusted and you are entrusted to end apartheid in Palestine,” Abbas said in a nearly 45-minute speech.”Can the world accept an apartheid regime in the 21st century?”

“Has the international community surrendered to the fact that Israel is a country above the law?” he asked. “The continuation of the occupation is a disgrace for the international community.”

“There is no place left for the state of Palestine and this is not acceptable,” he said.

“The two-state solution is in jeopardy,” he said, warning, “We cannot as Palestinians stand still in the face of this threat.”

“Our choice is the two-state solution on the 1967 borders,” Abbas said, “and we will grant every chance for the efforts being undertaken by President Donald Trump and the Quartet and international community as a whole to achieve a historic agreement that brings the two-state solution to reality, enabling the state of Palestine with its capital East Jerusalem to live in peace and security side by side with Israel.”

The Quartet refers to the grouping of the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union guiding the Middle East peace process.

Abbas said that failing the re-establishment of talks, he would continue to seek recognition of Palestinian statehood outside the framework of a peace process — a posture Israel has rejected repeatedly as sabotaging chances for peace. In a first for a Palestinian president since the launch of the Oslo peace process in 1993, however, Abbas also suggested that the Palestinians might, in the face of the collapse of hopes for two states, agitate for full rights in a single state.

Likening Israel’s control of the West Bank to a “one-state reality,” Abbas warned that in the failure of a two-state solution, “neither you, nor we, will have any other choice but to continue the struggle and demand full, equal rights for all inhabitants of historic Palestine. This is not a threat, but a warning of the realities before us as a result of ongoing Israeli policies that are gravely undermining the two-state solution.”

Abbas said withdrawing the Israeli presence from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, by contrast, would be a blow to Palestinian terror groups, which continue to call for the use of violence as a strategy of resistance.

Abbas went on to urge the British government to correct the “historic injustice” it inflicted on the Palestinian people by issuing the Balfour Declaration in 1917, a document that espoused London’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The PA president criticized the United Kingdom for marking the 100th anniversary of the declaration, and demanded compensation.

Abbas also told the Assembly that Israel’s refusal to recognize a state of Palestine along the 1967 lines “put into question” its commitment to the Oslo peace accords signed in 1993.

“We recognize the state of Israel on the 1967 borders, but Israel’s refusal to recognize these borders has put into question the mutual recognition of the agreement signed in Oslo,” he said.

“Today’s lies and excuses have proven once again that the Palestinian leadership is a serial evader of peace,” Ambassador Danny Danon said in a statement.

Earlier on Wednesday, Abbas met with US President Donald Trump and, in a markedly more conciliatory tone than his UN General Assembly speech, expressed optimism of the US administration’s efforts to broker “the deal of a century” between the Palestinians and Israel.

Abbas said the 20-plus meetings PA officials have held with US officials since Trump took office in January “gives us the assurance and the confidence that we are on the verge of real peace.”

Trump, in response, told the Palestinian leader that “we have a pretty good shot — maybe the best shot ever” at achieving peace in the entire Middle East. “I certainly will devote everything within my heart and within my soul to get that deal made.”

“Israel is working very hard toward the same goal, and I must tell you, Saudi Arabia and many of the different nations are working also hard,” Trump told Abbas. “So we’ll see if we can put it together. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.

Trump, who has made resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict one of the “highest priorities” of his presidency, failed to mention the decades-long dispute in his address to the UN a day earlier.

During his speech, Trump trashed the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program and dubbed North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a “rocket man” on a “suicide mission.” Also on Tuesday, Trump met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and told the Israeli leader that a regional peace deal would be a “fantastic achievement” and that “we are giving it an absolute go.”

In his own remarks to the General Assembly, Netanyahu said that Israel was ready for peace with Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world. However, his commitment to the principle of “two states for two peoples,” expressed last year, was absent from his speech. Netanyahu later hailed Trump’s remarks as the most “courageous speech” he had ever heard at the world body.

Obama’s deliberate betrayal of Israel at the UN just before he left office has emboldened Israel’s enemies with a new determination to harm the Jewish state and, if possible, the USA.

The UN, and the International Criminal Court, both seek any possible opening to embarrass, threaten, and harass the State of Israel, the only democracy in the entire Middle East. If the ICC can manage to control Israel, it will be able to control ANY nation including the United States.

The US Congress is now considering a new bill called the Safeguard Israel Act, which will cut off US taxpayer funding for the UN ($620 million per year plus $2 billion for “peacekeeping”) until the UN repeals the outrageous anti-Israel resolution which Obama allowed to be approved. Congress is also working to renew sanctions against Iran and undo the disastrous nuclear deal Obama made with Iran, a deal which endangers Israel directly and the US as well.

Here are some details which you need to know:

Obama deliberately betrayed Israel at the UN in his final days in office, allowing passage of the viciously anti-Israel UN Security Council Resolution 2334. This move by Obama was an act of utter cowardice, abandoning our longstanding policy of supporting our important ally at the United Nations. Joining this attempt to delegitimize Israel at the UN was something no other US president had ever considered doing. This resolution at the UN calls Jewish settlements and Jerusalem itself “occupied territory” and attempts to cripple Israel’s sovereignty, weaken its borders, leave it susceptible to false criminal charges at the International Criminal Court, and strengthen the pernicious BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) which seeks to not just undermine but absolutely destroy the Jewish State.

Among other things, this resolution attempts to provide legal diplomatic cover for genocidal aggression incited by radical anti-Israel groups like Hamas and Fatah.

This betrayal at the UN emboldens the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) and other enemies of Israel to bring charges against Israel at the ICC. If we allow the ICC to gain jurisdiction where it now has none, America’s own sovereignty will be at risk, as well as that of all other independent UN member nations.

Emboldened by Obama’s stupid and disastrous nuclear deal with Iran, that nation is now testing ballistic missiles — which in itself is a violation of the nuclear deal. The Iran nuclear deal was born of US (and Obama’s) weakness; Secretary of State John Kerry begged Iran’s ayatollahs almost daily to come to the table with an agreement in just about any form. During the negotiations, Kerry caved in to virtually all Iranian demands. As the deal was finally agreed upon, US citizens who had been held hostage in Iranian prisons for years were made to wait in a plane sitting on the tarmac in Tehran until Obama finally flew in a planeload of hundreds of millions in cash for the ayatollahs.

NORM ‘n’ AL Note: We watched Obama for eight years try to construct some sort of meaningful foreign policy, but all he could ever do was re-emphasize over and over to the rest of the world that he had no leadership ability and no backbone. Obama made the US a laughing-stock among the countries of the world. With Obama in the White House, our enemies no longer feared us and our allies no longer respected us.

With near-zero chance of getting the UN to mandate Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority turns to Russia for help.

Russia has finally found a lever with which to gain revenge on the United States and the West for its support for Ukraine. As payback for the painful sanctions imposed on its economy, Moscow is now brandishing a new diplomatic sword.

The man who handed the Kremlin this sword on a silver platter, thereby enabling it to divert the world’s attention away from what is taking place in Ukraine, is none other than Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Out of total desperation given the near-zero chance of gaining UN Security Council approval of a draft mandating an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Abbas has now turned to Russia, one of the five permanent members of the UNSC, in hopes that it will help Ramallah advance the draft resolution.

“How didn’t we think of this before?” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov must be thinking to himself. “Here’s an excellent issue to play with in the UN with which to drive the Americans crazy.”

Lavrov seems downright jovial in the photograph showing him receiving veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat during the latter’s visit to Moscow. For his part, Erekat looks as if he has hit the jackpot – an alliance with Russia, a dream come true for the Palestinian people. Both men, however, are fooling each other and themselves.

In truth, Russian support for the Palestinian draft resolution won’t contribute an iota to advancing the document in the Security Council. Lavrov, who once served as Moscow’s envoy to the UN, knows this full well. In the three years since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Russia has consistently thwarted every attempt by the Security Council to pass a resolution with the aim of removing Bashar Assad from power in Damascus.

The Russians even torpedoed strictly declarative, nonbinding, and symbolic resolutions put forward by the US and the Europeans who sought to condemn the Assad regime. The Americans don’t like seeing the Security Council involve itself with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a portfolio that Washington views as its exclusive domain. One doesn’t need to be an expert in international relations to guess how the Americans would react to a Russian bid to push forward a Security Council draft paper on the Palestinian question, particularly after US Secretary of State John Kerry has also gone on record as stating that the proposed resolution is unacceptable.

What does Moscow gain from all this? It buys time – two, perhaps three days during which the UN doesn’t talk about Ukraine. That’s quite a shabby gain for a country that seeks to solidify its standing as a world power. The Palestinians, meanwhile, are shooting themselves in the foot. Not only have they angered Washington with their obstinacy, insisting on submitting the draft paper for a vote, but now they are perceived by the Obama administration as courting Vladimir Putin, a US adversary. Ramallah wants guarantees from a Russia that is barely hanging on economically due to Western sanctions.

Decades ago, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Abba Eban, said of the Palestinians: “They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Now it seems they have stepped up their diplomatic game. Abbas and his cohorts in the Palestinian leadership have intentionally created an opportunity – a UNSC draft resolution and an appeal to Russia – that they will not miss.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to the intensifying global pressures on Israel is to firmly reject any further territorial withdrawals that would put Israel’s security at risk, stating that “Israel will not lose hope for peace, but neither will it cling to false hope.”

He was also forthright about his intention to continue residential construction in Jerusalem, noting that “all previous Israeli governments have done so. … It is also clear to the Palestinians that these territories will remain within Israel’s borders in any deal.”

The Obama administration’s response to Israel’s confirmation that it would continue to create homes in the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem was vindictive, brutal and in stark contrast to its deafening silence in relation to Palestinian incitement.

The US State Department went so far as to accuse Israel of acting “illegally,” and in a manner “incompatible with the pursuit of peace”.

In an interview with American journalist Jeffery Goldberg published in The Atlantic, a senior US official referred to Prime Minister Netanyahu as “chickenshit” and described him as “the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most”. More than Assad, Erdogan, the Iranian Ayatollah and Putin the ‘peace loving’ Abbas?

The curtain drop to the administration’s malice was displayed last week in the Ya’alon imbroglio. In a private conversation earlier this year, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon disparaged Secretary of State John Kerry’s behavior in relation to the peace process as “obsessive” and “messianic.” He made his remarks when Kerry was repeatedly making provocative statements against Israel and then retracting them.

As defense minister, Ya’alon is limited in what he can say publicly and the fact that he spoke off-record is irrelevant if he was subsequently quoted. But he apologized and reiterated the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Nevertheless, the White House inflated his unofficial remark totally out of proportion.

To invoke such a vendetta against the defense minister of its most important regional ally, months after the event, exposes the pettiness of the Obama administration. That Ya’alon was denied access to Vice President Joe Biden and National Security Adviser Susan Rice is problematic. But that this was leaked by State Department sources at the end of his visit was odious. To make matters even worse, the information was leaked to the Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, whose publisher is engaged in a long-standing crusade to demonize Netanyahu and his government and which was the source that had initially released Ya’alon’s off-the-record comments.

Clearly, the White House regarded this as an opportunity to undermine not only Ya’alon’s standing, but the entire Netanyahu government.

This is just the latest in a series of vindictive incidents by the Obama administration because Israel has dared to reject its diktats. Nothing illustrates President Barack Obama’s contemptuous attitude toward Israel more than his directive to withhold arms to Israel during wartime because Israel had rejected Kerry’s initiative to engage Qatar as the mediator to end the Gaza hostilities.

As virtually every foreign policy initiative by Obama has proven to be disastrous, his recommendations or directives must be viewed with skepticism. After all, it is we who will have to live with the consequences.

This administration adamantly insists that the Israel-Palestine status quo is untenable. Yet it remains silent as Hamas boasts of efforts to restore its terror tunnel network; barely reacts to the mayhem in Syria and Iraq where close to a quarter million people have been butchered; ignores the Qatari funding of Hamas and other terrorist entities including the Islamic State; fails to castigate Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for enabling jihadists to traverse Turkey’s territory in order to fight in Syria, while standing by and allowing the massacre of the Kurds on his border.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas humiliated the U.S. administration by merging with Hamas without prior consultation. But the U.S. failed to criticize this move, has not responded to Abbas’ policy of ethnic cleansing by making any future Palestinian state Judenrein, nor condemned him for executing any Palestinian found selling land to an Israeli. The U.S. did not reprimand him for failing to denounce the act of terror in which a baby and a young woman were killed last week in Jerusalem. Yet when an Arab teenager was shot to death while hurling potentially lethal Molotov cocktails at Israeli automobiles, the U.S. immediately conveyed its condolences to the family and urged Israelis to initiate an investigation.

Israel, the principal regional ally of the U.S., is the only country consistently facing criticism and has become the punching bag for the inept Obama administration, even being denunciated for opposing a nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Only recently, Kerry again conveyed to an Arab audience the absurd allegation that the Arab-Israel conflict fanned ISIS and Islamic extremism. Yet the U.S. assiduously avoids condemning or responding to rogue states guilty of criminal bloodletting, out of fear of being further humiliated and exposed as lacking leadership.

It should be noted that there is a broad consensus throughout Israel that the government is justified in resisting efforts by the U.S. and others to restrict construction in its capital Jerusalem and the major settlement blocs – which were never challenged prior to the Obama administration.

There are those who question the wisdom of such an announcement at this time, but if there is one issue for which we should stand united and maintain our rights, it is construction in Jerusalem, whose development must not be dependent on endorsement from other countries.

The administration’s efforts to demean Israel’s leaders have always been counterproductive. Despite the initial media frenzy, Israelis have in such circumstances responded by rallying in support of their government. And yet, now when the house of Israel should display unity, some of our politicians are behaving irresponsibly.

Finance Minister Yair Lapid’s and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni public response to the recent pathetic and mean attempt to humiliate Ya’alon implying that the fault for the breakdown in relations rests with Israel rather than with a bumbling and spiteful U.S. administration were highly inappropriate. They promote chaos and bring shame upon themselves and the government they purport to represent, conveying the mistaken impression that Israel suffers from battered wife syndrome.

It is also regrettable that, in the face of a vindictive U.S. administration, Opposition Leader Isaac Herzog failed to suspend political infighting and accused Netanyahu of being “personally responsible for the destruction of relations with the U.S.” He could have gained respect by stating unequivocally that there cannot be any limits on construction in the Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem.

Yes, there is constant tension and endless recriminations bouncing between the U.S. administration and Israel. And according to Goldberg, there is now even the threat that the US “may actually withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations”.

The government has made every effort to avoid aggravating the situation but Israel is a sovereign democratic nation and there are occasions when it must reject unrealistic or dangerous demands from the U.S.

Netanyahu should be commended for his extraordinary diplomatic balancing act in withstanding the unreasonable pressure from Obama and Kerry, avoiding outright confrontations and in so doing, retaining the support of American public opinion and Congress.

Israel is a small country and its people are aware that the U.S. is crucial to their survival. But does that oblige us to forfeit our self-respect or sovereignty and fawn toward an administration that repeatedly displays its contempt and humiliates us?

We should display unity by supporting our prime minister’s policy of rejecting further territorial concessions until the Palestinian leaders separate from Hamas, engage in negotiations and display flexibility to enable us to achieve our security requirements. We will not be denied the right to construct homes in our capital or in the major settlement blocs, which will remain within Israel. We seek the support of the United States but we must retain our sovereignty.

NORM ‘n’ AL Note: The Bible could not be more clear when it says in Genesis 12:3, speaking of Abraham and God’s Chosen People, “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you.” To be in a position of opposing God is not only dangerous, but it is usually terminally stupid. And that is precisely where the Obama administration is putting the United States, in opposition to God and the Jewish people. Another quotation from the Bible that is well worth remembering is this one: “The fool has said in his heart that there is no God.” Learn more at WHOFIRST.COM.

NORM ‘n’ AL Note: This is the same Israel which showed restraint while hundreds of rockets from Gaza landed in its towns and cities, while its citizens were kidnapped and killed by Palestinians, while it watched the rockets being launched from Gaza neighborhoods in an attempt to maximize Palestinian deaths for PR purposes, and while those in Gaza continued to dig and fortify tunnels under the Israeli border. When it became apparent that the attacks were not going to stop, Israel finally said “We must make them stop.”

Even the few delusional apologists who maintain that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is a genuine partner for peace must have been stunned by his obscene and demagogic address on Rosh Hashana [Sept. 24th] at the United Nations General Assembly.

Abbas, whose 1982 doctoral thesis promoted Holocaust denial, accused Israel of engaging in genocide, terrorism and apartheid. He condemned “the racist occupying state” for having “chosen to make it a year of a new war of genocide perpetrated against the Palestinian people.” He stated that “the devastation caused by this recent aggression is unmatched in modern times” and that “in the name of Palestine and its people, I affirm here today: We will not forget and we will not forgive, and we will not allow war criminals to escape punishment.”

Significantly, he even reverted to the pre-Oslo Accords jargon of the radical rejectionists by referring to Israel as the “colonial occupying power” and other derogatory terms. He promised to “maintain the traditions of our national struggle established by the Palestinian fedayeen… in early 1965” – an unequivocal endorsement of terrorism.

The speech was clearly a calculated appeal to the Palestinian street to demonstrate that his hatred of Israel matched that of Hamas. He was probably also desperate to refocus attention on the Palestinian issue, which had been relegated to the sidelines because the world, including Arab countries, is obsessed with the threat of Islamic State (IS). US President Barack Obama’s address at the General Assembly even contradicted his previous rigid stance by conceding that “Iraq, Syria and Libya should cure… the illusion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the main source of problems in the region.”

None of this should shock us. From the outset, Abbas has consistently followed the policy of his predecessor. Like Yasser Arafat with Ehud Barak at Camp David, Abbas rejected the offers of Ehud Olmert in 2008, which would have enabled the creation of a Palestinian state on 94 percent of the territories formerly occupied by Jordan.

Abbas intensified the demonic hatred of Israel promoted in Palestinian schools, mosques and the media. His brainwashing bred a criminal society suffused with hatred, to the point at which proud mothers on Palestinian state television would exuberantly thank Allah for enabling their children to become martyrs by murdering Jews, while praying that their remaining offspring would follow the same path. Only last week, the PA referred to the murderers of the three Israeli teenagers as “shahids” – martyrs.

Abbas has diverted vast sums of money toward salaries for terrorists in Israeli prisons and provided state pensions for families of suicide bombers, as well as generous endowments for released mass murderers, who are sanctified as heroes. He has honored perpetrators of the most horrific suicide bombings and acts of terrorism by establishing city squares, football clubs and institutions in their names.

The duplicitous Abbas shares precisely the same goal as Hamas – the destruction of Israel. Like Arafat, who denied the existence of the Jewish Temple, he too refutes Jewish links to Israel. But he was savvy enough to realize that he could tactically achieve far more by theoretically disavowing violence and employing diplomatic pressure to seek to undo Jewish sovereignty in stages.

The world is willfully blind to his corruption and unperturbed by the PA’s siphoning off of billions of dollars of international funds designated to improve the living conditions of Palestinians. Abbas also suspended elections for four years, aware that the majority of his constituents were likely to support Hamas because of the PA’s rampant corruption.

Until now, Abbas spoke with a forked tongue, speaking softly and depicting himself as a man of peace to the West, particularly to America, while simultaneously inciting his people to vicious hatred.

Alas, due to a combination of naiveté and US pressure, Israel engaged in an Alice in Wonderland charade of lip service to Abbas as a “moderate” and “peace partner” instead of exposing him as the corrupt autocrat of a criminal society.

One of the most notable Israeli apologists for Abbas is former president Shimon Peres who, still desperate to uphold the discredited Oslo Accords, continues to defend him as a moderate peace partner even when directly confronted with evidence to the contrary.

Now that Abbas has merged the PA with Hamas, despite the fact that until recently they were still murdering his supporters, he has decided to dispense with his sugar-coated approach. With the nightmare of Hamastan extending to the 1949 armistice lines, Abbas now realizes that there is no way that Israel will cede additional territories unless it can be assured of total security – currently impossible.

Thus he has effectively terminated the “peace process” and is focusing his efforts on delegitimizing Israel and garnering popularity among the Palestinians by expressing extremist views.

Abbas has effectively written off the Obama administration but is aware that the vast majority of countries affiliated with the United Nations would even endorse resolutions that the world was flat if promoted by the 57 members of the Islamic bloc and their allies. Besides, under the current grotesque circumstances, many European nations will continue to debase themselves by abstaining from even the most outrageous anti-Israeli resolutions.

However, the bellicose Abbas address enabled Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to speak at the UN in an uninhibited manner for the first time, without recourse to the mindless mantras expressing hopes for cooperation with our “peace partner.”

Even the US State Department, in a rare criticism, condemned Abbas’ speech, saying it “included offensive characterizations that were deeply disappointing and which we reject” and are “counterproductive and undermined efforts to create a positive atmosphere and restore trust between the parties.”

It did, however, dissociate the US from Netanyahu’s equation of Hamas and IS as both representing “branches of the same poisonous tree.”

We should be under no illusions. Abbas has brought the phony, American-orchestrated peace process to an end. He has effectively rejected any future negotiations based on providing Israel with security. Aside from his incendiary libel, by suggesting that Israel accept the ‘right of return’ of Palestinian refugees, he is blatantly promoting eliminationism.

He will now seek to galvanize the majority of nations – Islamic countries, Third World countries and rogue states – to intensify efforts toward delegitimizing and demonizing Israel. This will lead to an active campaign to criminalize the IDF at the International Criminal Court, and to impose global sanctions on Israel.

But that will only become a real threat if Abbas obtains the support – or even the abstention of – the United States and the major European countries.

To retain our relationship with Western countries, Netanyahu must go further than exposing the criminal nature of Palestinian society, which he did so belatedly but articulately in his address at the UN General Assembly.

Implementing a two-state solution is currently inconceivable. Even setting aside the fanatical hatred of the PA, a Palestinian state today would effectively transform the West Bank into Hamastan.

Nor, in light of the repeated total ineptitude of UN peacekeeping forces, can Israel be expected to delegate security to international parties.

But the overwhelming majority of Israelis do not wish to annex territories that will ultimately result in millions of additional Arabs having voting rights and the ability to transform Israel into a binational state. The government must therefore announce that there is no intention of annexing Palestinian territories other than the major settlement blocs – less than 5% of the formerly Jordanian-occupied West Bank – based on demographic changes. US recognition of the settlement blocs as part of Israel would be consistent with the commitment that president George W. Bush gave to prime minister Ariel Sharon in 2004 to encourage the disengagement from Gaza.

The Israeli government should freeze construction other than for natural growth in areas that are located outside the settlement blocs.

Today we need Western support on a number of critical issues: preventing the rearming of Hamas; avoiding sanctions; combating the intensified efforts to demonize and delegitimize Israel; and above all building a coalition to prevent Iran becoming a nuclear power.

Even though it could generate domestic problems among far-right elements, the government must speak with one voice and commit itself to a separation from the Palestinians if and when there shall be a genuine peace partner. In the interim, it will seek to improve the living standards of Palestinians in the West Bank.

Netanyahu must convey the unequivocal message that Israel’s objective is to live in peace with its neighbors, and it is only legitimate security concerns and a lack of a peace partner that prevent us from moving forward immediately with a separation.

If that can be communicated to the US and Western countries, the defamatory outburst by Abbas at the General Assembly could prove to have well served our cause.